


12 Cups of Coffee

by greerian



Category: The Book of Mormon - Parker/Stone/Lopez
Genre: Angst, Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Asexual Kevin Price, Canon Gay Character, Coffee, Gay Elder McKinley, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Nausea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 14:06:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4749140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerian/pseuds/greerian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arnold shows up at twelve cups of coffee; Elder McKinley came at six. Edited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	12 Cups of Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> TW: nausea, referenced sexual assault, unhealthy coping behaviors, and self-loathing due to sexual/romantic orientation.

“Another!” He slams his empty paper cup down, glaring as it tips over and rolls away. It hits a few of its buddies on its way off the counter, and he realizes that he just finished up his sixth serving. _Gosh, six cups of coffee…_ "What am I doing?”

But Kevin Price knows exactly what he’s doing. He never wants to sleep again, and coffee is supposed to keep you awake and energetic and cheerful. Coffee is supposed to make people human again, and man, does he need that. He’s sick to his stomach and he’s sweating _everywhere_ from the feeling of liquid fire pouring through his veins, paired with the heat of the just-now setting sun, but at least he can tell himself this feels better than sitting back in the mission hut with his head in his hands.

The lady who runs the stand sets another cup down, eyeing the others with disdain.

“Are you gonna cut me off?” Kevin asks. She gave up on asking whether he wanted cream or sugar about three refills back.

She snorts. “Caffeine is not like alcohol, idiot boy. You,” she makes a hurling noise, “before you die.”

_Well. Good to know._

When he takes up his next cup, swilling it like his tongue isn’t scorched a thousand ways to Sunday, she shakes her head and moves back to washing dishes. She’s ignored him this whole time, and he finds he actually likes it.

He doesn’t want anyone to find him, here. Maybe that’s why he picked coffee instead of alcohol. Kitguli has a bar, of course. Alcohol wouldn’t be hard to come by. But everyone would _know_ to look for him there. It’s more common for ‘broken’ Mormons to indulge in _that_ way, anyway.

This way, he’s breaking the rules- no, he’s _demolishing_ the rules, running rampant over them, but he’s doing it _his_ way, and nobody’s going to look for him here. He can… yes, he's definitely at that point, break down in peace.

“Elder… Elder Price?”

 _Frick_.

He doesn’t turn around, but Elder McKinley comes up to him anyway, resting a too-friendly hand on his shoulder.

“Elder Price, what on earth are you doing?”

He scoffs. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

McKinley flails a little, looking over the cup-laden counter. “But, but  _Elder_ , drinking coffee is against the rules!”

“Yeah? So is going places without your companion and none of you stopped me when I stomped right into General Butt-effing-Naked’s camp.”

He gasps, pulling away from Kevin like even touching him will transmit a disease he brought back from that awful place. “You couldn’t have!”

Kevin smirks, downing as much of his coffee as he can in one swallow.

“Elder Price, no! I, as your district leader, cannot, in good conscience, continue to let you _indulge_ yourself in this way! Put that cup down, _right now_!”

The bitterness of the drink catches up with him; he shudders, slamming the cup down, and McKinley gives him a confused look.

“....you don’t even like it, do you?” he asks, picking up the half-empty cup. “You’re drinking it black? Elder Price, what on _earth_ are you doing?”

“I’m drowning my sorrows in caffeine, what does it look like I’m doing?”

“But why? Just because you didn’t convert any Ugandans, that doesn’t… doesn’t call for measure such as _this_.”

“Ha!” Kevin cries, throwing his head back. His tie tightens around his neck like a noose, and he loosens it with frantic, tugging fingers. McKinley’s eyes snap there immediately, and he almost asks ‘Turning it off, huh?’, just to rile him up; but the thought of Elder McKinley liking him… no, being attracted to him, _sexually_ , just adds to the nausea growing in his gut. “You think one little problem like that could bring me down? You think I’d just… just, give up, because of one _failure_? Screw you, McKinley.”

He gasps, again, but Kevin just focuses on downing the rest of his drink until it’s yanked out of his hands, spilling coffee over both of them.

“What the hell?” he yells, but Elder McKinley’s face is set and he grabs onto Kevin’s shoulders firmly, looking him in the eyes, and suddenly Kevin realizes  _Oh_. That _’s why they made him district leader_.

“If that’s not it, Elder,” he says, “then tell me what happened. I don’t like seeing you like this.”

He probably means breaking the rules, but Kevin catches the way his gaze dances over Kevin’s face, up to his tangled and matted hair, to his bloodshot eyes, to his chapped and bleeding lips, to his mangled tie, ripped off buttons, coffee-stained shirt. He looks up again before he reaches Kevin’s waist, though, and Kevin scoffs.

“Like what you see, Elder McKinley?”

McKinley swallows, tightening his grip.

“Don’t avoid the question, Elder Price.”

Kevin brushes him off. “I’m not an elder anymore,” he snaps. “I don’t want any part of your church.”

He mostly says it to get a reaction out of McKinley, and it should be the most terrifying thing he’s ever said, but he hardly feels a twinge of fear. Everything’s… empty. Numb. And nauseous. Maybe he just has to puke all of his feelings out. 

Well. That’ll take a _hell_ of a lot more coffee.

“...what’s your first name, then?”

“What?”

“I’m not going to call you ‘Mr. Price’, and if you refuse to be called an Elder, I would like to address you by your name.”

“...Kevin. I’m Kevin Price.”

“All right, Kevin. You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this. What has… _taken you away_ from the church?”

He doesn’t like the way McKinley’s talking to him, like he’s a little kid in trouble. He’s too soothing, too calm. Then he realizes: McKinley’s not treating him like a child; he’s treating him like he’s on the edge of a cliff, about to jump off.

“I’m not going to call you Elder effing Mckinley,” he says, clutching at the empty cup in his hands. “You don’t have any authority over me anymore.”

The other man nods, holding out his hand. “I’m Connor,” he says mildly.

Kevin shakes his hand with a painfully tight grip, trying to get _any_ kind of reaction out of him. Connor doesn’t flinch.

“But, Kevin, I’m not going to leave this… I’m not going to leave your side until you tell me what happened to you.”

“You really wanna know?”

“Yes, Kevin, I really do.”

Kevin sits up, his back aching. He’s been slouching for hours, and it’s not as comfortable as people make it out to be.

He could poke fun at McKinley some more; he could ask if he would stay even if Kevin did something _obscene_ , and maybe that would get him too exasperated to stick around, but… if Kevin does tell him, it’ll definitely get a reaction.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine.” He stands, rolling out his shoulders, and he winces. Everything hurts. But he has to be standing for this. He wants to have Connor squirming and cringing against the counter by the end; he wants to yell in his face, and scream at him for _ignoring_ him, for not stopping him from being a total _idiot_ and trying to face down a fucking _warlord_ , for treating him well and looking up at him like, like he could save everything, and then throwing him aside the minute he didn’t deliver. He wants to make him pay, and _goddamn_ if he isn’t going to have fun with it.

McKinley is watching him blankly, but straightens up on his own stool, wary.

“It hurts,” Kevin starts conversationally, sticking his hands in his pockets. “It hurts to stand up. But it hurts worse to sit down. Lying down is best, but, _no_ , I can’t be lazy. I can’t lie down in the middle of the day, can I? There’s poor, dying Ugandans out there that we have to bring to the Church. It’s not like the church can save their lives, of course, but we _must_ show them that Heavenly Father _loves_ them before they die slow, awful, horrible deaths, right? And I couldn’t possibly rest and recover while there are dying people to comfort with  _platitudes_ , with empty truths. No, no, of course not.

"I sound pretty bitter, don’t I? You should probably tell me to ‘turn it off’. Turn off that confusion, Elder Price. Turn off the questions. Turn off the doubt. Turn off the feeling of being a complete and utter failure because _Arnold Cunningham_ 's lying is a better approach than the one that always worked for you in the US! Turn off the fact that you made one mistake and now no one even wants to talk to you! Just, just turn it off, right?

"Well. _Well_ , you don’t want to listen to me complain, do you? You’re a busy guy, a _district leader_ ; you’ve got things to do, people to baptize, you don’t have time to sit here and keep me from breaking down or killing myself or _drinking coffee_ , so I guess I’ll just tell you. When you and the others _left_ me, just… ignored me in favor of the Mormon who could actually _do things_ , who was getting people to listen to what we taught, I had an idea. It was an incredible idea.” He stops to laugh. It’s a deep, belly-shaking laugh, and he hates it.

“It was my… my incredible idea. What I was sent here to do. I was going to convert a Ugandan warlord. I was going to bring General Butt-Fucking-Naked to the church. Me, Kevin Price! Doesn’t that sound… incredible?”

McKinley is watching him, not saying anything, but his eyes are wide, unblinking, and his hands are twisted in the sides of his slacks, white-knuckled.

“Yeah, get excited! This is the best part! So I’m there, pray- no. I’m talking to the skies, as if there’s _anyone_ out there, listening, and I say ‘I’ve just got to trust Heavenly Father. Sure, I saw this guy shoot someone in the face, but if I just trust, y’know, faith, trust and fucking pixie dust, God will protect me!’ And I march right into the general’s camp, just me and my… my little, pocket-sized copy of the Book of Mormon, and I go up to the general, and I ignore the guns, and… and I tell him that in 1978, God changed his mind about letting black people into the church.” He shakes his head, chuckling. “What the hell. No wonder the Ugandans don’t want to listen to us. What a stupid thing to say. Anyway, the best is yet to come, don’t you worry. I’m standing there, and his men are all pointing their guns at me, and I tell him he can be a Mormon, too, and just... just _believe_ , the way I’m doing, with blind _fucking_ faith, like any of it matters, and then… you’re not gonna believe this, I take his hand, and pull him up off his chair, and I start singing a worship song. I’m singing, and lifting my hands to God, with a Ugandan warlord who wants to kill me. And you know what he does? He doesn’t kill me! No, no, he doesn’t kill me, can you believe it? I’m not a ghost! See?” He takes Connor’s hand, squeezing it before throwing it away, like touching McKinley disgusts him. “I’m still here! Because, instead of killing me, you know what he did? Come on, take a wild guess.”

Connor shakes his head.

“Fine, fine, don’t guess then. It’s not like you would have gotten it right, anyway. It’s so fucking crazy, I don’t think anybody would have guessed.” He laughs, leaning back on the counter. He hates laughing, but he just can’t fucking _stop_ for some reason, and he can’t stop cussing. _This isn’t how it’s supposed to go_ , he thinks. _I’m supposed to make him pay_. So he stands up, and he straightens his tie, and he comes right up to Connor, leaning in too close.

“You know what that general did?” he murmurs.

Connor blinks, his eyes getting even wider.

“He took my copy of the Book of Mormon,” Kevin whispers, “just took it right from my hands, and then he had his men hold me down. Just… on the ground, in the dust. He ripped my clothes off, and… he just…” he stops, closes his eyes, swallows. _Make him pay_. “He shoved it right up my ass.”

Finally, _finally_ , McKinley reacts. He gasps, and he can’t hold Kevin’s gaze anymore. Kevin just watches him, watches as he takes in the story, one hand bracing himself on the counter; watches him start to hyperventilate, and watches him try to calm himself down.

“Yeah, fun little story, isn’t it?” he mocks, standing back. “Try turning that one off, Elder.”

McKinley shakes his head again, chest heaving, and Kevin stalks forward.

“But you know the worst part?” he says, shoving Connor up against the counter. “I knew, I knew that whole time, that nobody on this entire, goddamn planet would be there to help me. They dragged me out of that camp, and they threw me to the ground, and told me to go home before they made things worse. And I _knew_ , McKinley, that you and your little buddies would never come and try to find me. There’s more important things to worry about than one failure of an elder who never did anything good on his mission; baptisms and new converts matter more than the ones who are already here, the ones already _stuck_. I was supposed to have my mission companion at my side, for _two fucking years_ , I was supposed to be stuck with him, and where was he? Making goo-goo eyes at his hot African girlfriend and bringing an entire village to the church!

"I crawled back, on my hands and knees, to the fucking mission house. I had to get myself to Gotswana’s office. I had to… he couldn’t give me any anesthetic, because they only use that for ‘serious’ conditions, and I wasn’t going to fucking _die_ from getting a Bible shoved up my ass, so no painkillers for me other than a bottle of expired Motrin, and guess what? He gave me a copy of my x-ray, so I have pictures of the whole thing. Like from a photo booth, at the fair; I’ve got my little keepsakes. He even let me keep the book. And I had to go through that, _all of that_ , alone. I came here, alone. I’ve had seven cups of black, disgusting, bitter coffee because I can’t-  I don’t want to have to endure the nightmares I know I’m going to have again, alone.

"I came here instead of going to the bar because I knew, I _knew_ you would never look here, if you looked at all. If I went to the bar and you never showed up, I’d have to live with the fact that you never even cared enough to try and find me. I could be dead right now, _Connor_ , and you would never fucking know! I could be dead! And what are you doing? Converting Ugandans and teaching them how turning it off will solve all the problems in their lives! Just, just turn it off! Am I bothering you? Are you feeling a little guilty? Just turn it off! Turn it off, McKinley! Turn it fucking off!”

His hands are fisted in Connor’s shirt, his feet are firm on the ground; he’s bracing himself against Connor, who’s against the counter, but he doesn’t feel grounded, he needs something to ground him, to feel like he’s still _here_ , he’s not… he’s not actually dead, he’s actually here screaming into his ex-district leader’s face, he’s actually trying to make him suffer as much as he himself has suffered, he’s not dead and he’s still… no. He’s not Kevin Price. He’s not _that_ Kevin Price. He’s not yesterday’s Kevin Price. He’s never going to be that person ever again.

He lets go, pushing himself away from Connor; his hands are shaking wildly. He realizes that he’s crying, and messily shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes, rubbing hard and fast.

Connor hasn’t made a sound. _Well_. Well. Kevin doesn’t know what else to say.

“Kevin,” he finally says. It’s soft, breathless. He sounds like a kid crying for his mom.

Kevin huffs. “What?”

“...I’m sorry.” It’s weak. Pathetic. Kevin doesn’t even care.

“Yeah, you should be.”

“No, I… you’re right. You’re entirely right. I never… just because turning it off works for some people doesn’t mean I-”

“No!” Kevin screams, wheeling on him again. “It doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! Not for some people, not for anybody! Not for you! Just, just stop lying to yourself, gosh! _God_ , you… you actually think just playing pretend will make anything go away?”

Connor opens his mouth to reply, and Kevin just wants to slap him.

“Stop! Just stop already, stop denying it! You think you’re not gay? Honestly? And your little tap performance in your pink, sparkling vests was supposed to, what,  _prove_  that? Just… stop. I’ve had enough of lies.”

It turns out the emptiness isn’t really empty; it’s just a bunch of everything, of every little emotion he’s never felt or never allowed himself to feel all bundled up together into something he can’t understand. It feels awful, and there’s bile crawling up the back of his throat and if anything, _anything_ happens right now he’s going to end up puking all over the floor.

He hasn’t eaten in over thirty-six hours. It’ll just be coffee and stomach acid, splashing everywhere. That’ll be fun to clean up.

Connor’s hand touches his arm, and he jumps back, stumbling and falling against the post of the little coffee stand.

“Kevin, you can’t… I understand that you’re… you’re hurting right now, but you can’t just… you can’t just say things like that. We all care about you, I promise. Heavenly Father cares about you, and He’s going to be what gets you through this.”

Kevin rolls his eyes, and Connor grabs onto his forearm.

“No, don’t roll your eyes at me; what happened to you was… that’s the worst story I’ve ever heard, and you can’t get through it by yourself. But you need to trust in Heavenly Father; this, somehow, must be part of his plan for you.”

Kevin wants to slap him, he really does; just shove him into the dirt and see how he likes it, but McKinley's voice is desperate, and he realizes that neither of them really know what to do. At least he’s not alone.

“I don’t believe in Heavenly Father,” he spits out. “Give me some other platitude to comfort myself with.”

“Kevin, I… I know that what we did, what _I_ did, was wrong, but the other elders and I… we do care about you. Honestly, we do, and Arnold would be heartbroken if he knew that this happened. You don’t know how much it affected me to hear you say all that.”

 _Oh, I know_ exactly _how much it affected you_ , he thinks. _That’s why I told you the damn story_.

“But Kevin, just because we got a little distracted doesn’t mean we don’t... This, what happened, it’s  _terrible_ and I will never forgive myself for letting it happen, but it doesn’t mean we don’t care. We do; I… I do.”

Kevin finally looks up, looks Connor in the eyes, and reels back in shock.

Connor’s looking at him desperate, scared, guilty, sad; but through all that he can see the naked love and affection in his eyes and… and it’s terrifying.

If he had seen that look minutes before, he’d laugh. He’d mock McKinley for it, for… for _liking_ him, for having a crush on another elder, even one like him; but now… he doesn’t want it. He never wanted to know that. He never wanted to see that. He doesn’t want to _deal_ with that, to know that he _wants_ that from him and he won’t, no, _can’t_ give it back. He _can’t_ give anything back, even if he wanted to; _oh god. God, no, even You, even after everything I’ve said, not even You would be so cruel as to do this to me_.

He doesn’t want to have to break Connor the way he’s been broken.

Connor steps back, hanging his head, and Kevin’s reaching out before he knows what he’s doing.

“McKinley, look, I-”

_Why am I trying to- what am I even doing? He’s the one scaring me. He’s the one pushing this on me, I don’t want this! I’ve never wanted this! This isn’t my fault!_

Because Kevin knows he’d never, not even in some alternate universe where everything had gone okay on his mission, or they weren’t Mormons, he _knows_ that there’s no way he could reciprocate. Plenty of people have had crushes on him, he’s been told; he’s never liked anyone back. At first, it was because he was too young. Who likes people like _that_ when they’re twelve, honestly? Then he got older, he was a teenager and his non-Mormon friends were all dating and asking why he couldn’t, why he didn’t, and it was because of the church, of course; he had his thoughts on higher things, he told them; he’s preparing for his mission. But then he got even older, and then he graduated, and even his Mormon friends are proposing to their girlfriends to get married after their missions and ‘Kevin, why don’t you try and find a nice girl to come home to?’ and not even his mission was a good enough excuse to cover up that he didn’t, doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want a nice girl. He doesn’t want a nice guy. He doesn’t want anyone. It’s just him, it’s just _Kevin_ , and it’s always been that way. He doesn’t want other people.

He was broken long before any of this ever happened.

Connor’s looking at him, a heartbroken look in his tear-filled eyes and, _god_ , did he say all that out loud?

“Fuck,” he mutters, scuffing his once-gleaming shoes through the dust. “Fuck!”

“Kevin-”

“Fuck!” he screams. “Why can’t- just, why- it’s… fuck!” He’s gasping, grasping at the fabric of his stained and dirty clothes, and he just _can’t_ -

“I can’t do this anymore!”

“Do what? Kevin, I didn’t m-”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what it is, I just _can’t_!”

The lady behind the counter is long gone; he pours himself another cup of coffee and makes another tally mark on her sheet.

He drinks it, chugging as much and as fast as he can, and the pain in his throat helps balance out the pain in his head and around his eyes and in his ass.

Connor doesn’t say anything.

He gasps, slamming down cup number eight, and wipes his eyes. “Fuck.”

He sees Elder McKinley wince in his peripheral vision, and, somehow, drawing from some, strange, far-off part of his soul, he manages to laugh.

“Really? That’s what’s going to make you cringe, me saying ‘fuck’ for, what, the twentieth time?”

It hurts to talk.

“No,” he replies, sniffling. “I was just thinking of how raw your throat’s going to be for the next few days.”

“Just get out of here, McKinley.” _I don’t need your pity_.

“Kevin-”

“Get out.”

Quietly, wordlessly, he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Please comment/leave kudos if you read, or fee free to leave me a message at my tumblr: greerian.tumblr.com.


End file.
